Synesthesia and Self-Perception: A Colorful Insight

Synesthesia and Self-Perception: A Colorful Insight

Jeffrey Besecker: This is The Light Inside, I'm Jeffrey Besecker.

Our Egos.

When it comes to our avian kin, their characteristic traits can also mirror that of the human psyche. Take, for instance, the raven. Rich in symbolism across various cultures and mythologies, they often embody a blend of positive and negative connotations. The combined yin and yang of our duality.

Frequently regarded as symbols of intelligence and wisdom, their ability to problem-solve, mimic human speech, and demonstrate complex social behaviors has led many cultures to associate them with higher intellect and wise cunning. When our backs are against the wall, the ego can be a bitter pill to swallow. Yet, when we step aside, it goes down like honey.

Some messages in life arrive in such a way that we can't help but laugh at the absurdity of their timing. If today we're a blackbird unbaked in the pie of life, what might we learn from that still, small inner voice we call the ego? If only we're willing to lean in and listen.

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In some mythologies, ravens serve as messengers or divine beings. For example, in Norse mythology, Odin, the chief god, is accompanied by two ravens, Huginn, associated with thought, and Muninn, memory, the pair flying around the world and bringing him information. Ravens are associated with death and afterlife. Their dark feathers and carrion-eating habits have led to their connection with the mysterious and the unknown.

In some cultures, they are seen as psychopomps, guiding souls between the world of the living and the realm of the hereafter. Sometimes in folklore, portrayed as tricksters, they are known for their playful and mischievous nature, often depicted as clever and cunning creatures who outsmart others for their own gain or amusement. In various indigenous cultures, ravens are revered for their mystic qualities and connection to the spiritual world.

They are seen as symbols of magic, prophecy, and shamanic powers, capable of bridging the gap between the physical and spiritual realms.

As highly adaptive birds, they thrive in a variety of environments, from the darkest forests to craggy and rugged urban terrains. As such, they symbolize adaptability, resourcefulness, and resilience in the face of adversity. In some traditions, ravens are seen as protective spirits or guardian animals that watch over and guide those in need. They are believed to offer spiritual guidance and serve as symbols of good, fortune, and providence.

Overall, the symbolism of Ravens is multifaceted, encompassing the themes of intelligence, death, transformation, trickery, magic, adaptability, protection, and guidance. And least we forget, resounding grace. Their mystique and enigmatic nature have captured human imaginations for centuries. making them enduring symbols in literature, folklore, and spiritual beliefs worldwide.

In The Raven, we might each find a kindred spirit, a mirror of every aspect of human ego, the animus of what makes us, of all things, us.

We're joined today by Heather Eck. Experiencing the trait of synesthesia has allowed Heather to see the world differently. Sights, sounds, and emotional sensations, all appearing as a rainbow of colors that, for the rest of us, go unnoticed.

Today, Heather and I explore what the experience of synesthesia can teach us both about our egos and seeing our personal perspectives in a new light. Aesthesia is the capacity for feeling, sensation, or sensitivity. It can also mean the normal ability to experience perception.

Jeffrey Besecker: Hello Heather, how are you?

Heather Eck: Hi, good morning, how are you?

Jeffrey Besecker: Fantastic. Thank you for joining us today. It's good to see you.

Heather Eck: You too. It's so nice to see you and to hear your voice and have the two go together.

Jeffrey Besecker: Heather, I'm excited to have this conversation with you today, looking at how we can relate synesthesia to our ego.

Heather Eck: Well, I'm so happy to be with you today.

Jeffrey Besecker: Heather, you experience a rare neurological condition called synesthesia.

Heather Eck: Synesthesia, yep.

Jeffrey Besecker: similar in relationship to anesthesia in that they both deal with consciousness.

Heather Eck: You know, I thought about that the other day because I told somebody that's the way to pronounce it. I was like, it's synesthesia, sort of like anesthesia.

Jeffrey Besecker: Yeah, true. This is an interesting circumstance. I've got right now three different people, including yourself, who each look at that aspect of how art can be utilized as a therapy or shapes and informs some aspect of our personal perspectives. I think there's a gap sometimes in finding out where that subconscious part actually validates and verifies. what's actually going on with our psychology and our human experience.

Heather Eck: Oh, that's so interesting. I just spoke to a woman who has another podcast called Synesthesia, and she really explores the scientific component of the synesthesia experience. And what was interesting about our conversation was that from a scientific perspective, you know, people who are synesthetes experience their senses cross, right? Like when I take in information, it appears to me in a different way. And most synesthetes have that same experience, but we don't experience that consistently. For example, you know, I wouldn't see the word love as I might see it as green. She might see it as pink. And so we don't, we don't have that thread that sort of pulls through. And what's interesting about the way that I take it in and the way that I process it from a, a more of a spiritual perspective, not really scientific, is that the color that I see always correlates to the chakra system and what the chakras represent in terms of an emotional, spiritual or physical aspect. So we kind of had this interesting conversation about like how do you take something that can be such a unique experience across people and apply some sort of scientific result to it. And we didn't arrive anywhere. We were sort of like, well, it's different for everybody. And I think that that's probably true with how we take in and experience art and how we use it for different ways too.

Jeffrey Besecker: There are, like everything, a vast number of ways that our personal preferences and experience interact. There again, there are certain observable patterns that are common occurrences. One thing we look at from the level of subconscious is how often those behaviors are just simply patterned and modeled from the default neural network. You know, we're not consciously aware of why we're doing it, yet we're completely confident in the validity of things. Compare and contrast. I've been speaking with a gentleman who is into NLP and through our conversations, you know, talking about how reprogramming that is subconscious. When we look at subconscious throughout that entire vernacular, you've probably heard a certain portion of our subconscious is beyond our awareness. You know, 90 percent of our consciousness is beyond our conscious awareness. It's like a common thing that floats around. I got curious about that. We hear it time and time again in that context that we take to be true, you know, 90% of it. Yet when you go back and do the research, there's no hard science to verify where that fact come from. We hear it time and time again, we repeat it. It's interesting to see how we form some of those beliefs based on that. Looking at color, where I'm eventually going with this is looking at our notions of color. What is hard scientific fact and why do we buy those beliefs about color or shape or our reflection upon art? I'm listening into your conversations on the chakras. Why did we initially form those perceptions about what color each chakra was? And then how much of that becomes a conditioned belief about it once we hear it?

Heather Eck: And it's so ancient, right? It goes so far back that you kind of go, well, where did it come from?

Jeffrey Besecker: We don't question it. Why do we buy into the idea of ancient wisdom? You know, and that's a very complex thing to pick apart. Right now that seems to be a very popular focus that's coming back into vogue, I'll say vogue, cultural acceptance that we always esteem ancient wisdom as somehow more beneficial. I'll put more beneficial on it. We assume it's been around a long time, so it's tested. Right. Yet how much of that ancient wisdom was ever tested to begin with?

Heather Eck: Gosh, you know, that's like the rabbit hole. You know, it's so interesting because I think we're all in this position of trying to learn and grow. We've got the growth mindset attitude, right? We kind of move through life to a degree where we take things at face value until we start to go, wait a minute. Why do I do this? What's the reason? What's the root issue? Why do we do these things? Why do we think that yellow represents this? Why does red represent this? I think we all arrive at this place where we go, there's got to be a reason for this, or there's got to be some explanation for this. That, for me, has been so powerful when I can sit down with somebody and talk about not just art, really, but color, meaning symbolism, the patterns or the cycles that we find ourselves in throughout our lives. The reason we keep making the same decision or we keep doing the same thing, expecting a different result is that we are, we're not always aware of why we do things until you sort of hit that, um, breakthrough breakdown, whatever you want to call it in your life, where you go, there's gotta be something more here. And those conversations for me are the most impactful where somebody goes, Oh my gosh, I see this now in a different way and that opens me up to receive information now. The way that I process it is different, the way that I respond to it is different, the way that I choose to now move through it is different. From a psychological perspective, from a spiritual perspective, from the human experience, I think we all sort of have to I think we all sort of have to get to that point where we go, why?

Jeffrey Besecker: From scientific research and pattern observation, we can draw that conclusion that a lot of times, for various reasons, we disconnect from that step. Yeah. From an emotional aspect, I think that's our biggest crux of where our audience is wanting to go. Looking at why we form those beliefs about collars, biggest concern was looking at art as therapy. We know there's a lot of background and history in that. How to, though, I think what sometimes is overlooked from what I'm gathering between some of our own assumptions within the team and what other practitioners are looking at is where that art also, although we have the highest motivation for it and have good intent about the outcome, but still sometimes the way art is utilized is like a secondary coping mechanism or sometimes becomes even avoiding the actual underlying emotional interaction. We then are in that kind of temporal experience of it's better now, but then it creeps back because that underlying problem still resurfaces because the art is the kind of deflection mode. I go, I feel better about doing my art. I feel better about looking at the art. It puts me in that present state of that emotion, but then that other suppressed emotional cycle comes back up.

Heather Eck: Right. That's interesting to me, too, because I think that we can use art as a way to process our feelings and our emotions. But just like when you find yourself in a therapeutic relationship, you can use that conversation in a way that's beneficial. But we always tend to kind of fall back into the reason that we decided to go there anyway.

Jeffrey Besecker: Why do we go back to that subconscious default program? And part of that portion is that we're simply expecting or just looking for the program to be our result rather than being present with that process and engaged with it.

Heather Eck: I think that's true. I think the reason why, I know for me, in just doing some of the spiritual work I've done too, you know, we all have like a wound or like the core wound that we come into the world with, that we greet people with, that mine is acceptance, right? My core wound is acceptance. I want to be accepted and loved unconditionally. So I move through the world trying to support That wound instead of trying to heal it all the time. And so I think we make decisions based out of that pain point. And so the reason we keep repeating some of those behaviors is because we've never actually completely healed whatever that wound is and we're looking for. different means to, you know, act as a balm on it. But we haven't really quite, it kind of goes back again to like, what's the root? What's the root cause? What's the root issue? Why do we continue to repeat those behaviors or their cycles? And I think that that's also subconscious and unconscious in a way, because we're not always aware of what that wound is.

Jeffrey Besecker: Where I then go with that is why do we form the belief that that's something we came into this physical existence with? Where do we find the evidence in that or how much of that is just an interaction from our implicit memory? How much of that early childhood experience that we're not fully developed in that prefrontal cognitive ability to start forming reason and we're just drawing back from that default network in the thalamus? you know, we're going to back just what patterns we witnessed and then that kind of randomness when that logic is missing, you know, and is that really randomness? There again, we start forming a lot of assumptions about those patterns. You know, that pulls me then out of the connection to the mind, which we've long been conditioned to think it's all the mind. They're again thinking and we go right back to it. Not that the thinking is inherently wrong, not that the thinking is inherently something we do away with, It's just recognizing which part of the picture it's dealing with. Going to our emotional process, large portions of that are beyond our conscious access. We look at things like the chemical exchange, the neural wiring, things in our autonomic nervous system that we see the outcome or symptom result of that interaction. But when it's actually going on, we're not active in it. We're not aware of it. If we're not aware of it, how do we know what occurred during that and which portion of that interaction was recorded? In that interaction, we miss large chunks of data. What the emotion signaled tends to be the part that becomes salient and it's based on that past. Are we actually measuring how we experience art or are we reflecting back and just simply mirroring a past experience?

Heather Eck: Yeah, that really is. I think that that's it kind of goes back to like, I always think that everything is so complicated and so simple at the same time, you know, the way that we experience life.

Jeffrey Besecker: We build the complexity in many regards, you know, that's in and of itself a concept we've created. And when did the first person say, well, this was difficult and this was easy, you know, is that we can't witness that art because it's such a gradual evolution and unraveling.

Heather Eck: It is. I think a lot of us move through life with blinders on or we move through life just sort of not keenly aware of what's actually happening. And I think, I think sometimes that art and music and, you know, the things that make us feel a thing slow us down to the degree that then we can connect with ourselves and we can actually connect to What am I feeling about this? And what is the actual response that I'm having? Because without that, we just sort of kind of pummel through. I think we just kind of like bulldoze through our lives. We bulldoze through our day. Yeah. And this is really about, I think, art in general really helps us to slow down. It's sort of, it can be, can be meditative. I think that meditation, that's where the simplicity comes in, right? Like when we get still and we get quiet and we become calm, that then we're actually able to tune in to ourselves from a deeper, more spiritual, more conscious level, where then we go I understand now why I feel this way or how I felt when that thing happened or why I associate this memory with this or you know what I mean it kind of it kind of forces that stillness that makes us get really more clear than we are if we're just sort of bulldozing through life.

Jeffrey Besecker: That's another step where our program is growing and changing, evolving as we interact. It's where our community is growing, changing, and what we deem evolving. It's very subjective and very kind of constructed. Looking then at the self, you know, we're going back and most of us are a little bit reluctant to pick apart that notion of self. And it's very observable when we are entirely apprehensive about taking away that concept of self. How so many of us and so often that becomes very unsettling and we'll cling to it with every breath of our life. I am a self, you know, that is me becomes a big battle. Why do we fight so adamantly to hold on to that when it's entirely built?

Heather Eck: Right. And then I think you can also get into the ego. You know, why do we make decisions? Where do I make decisions from?

Jeffrey Besecker: What is that ego? And is it a thing or is it a bunch of things? You know, it's another thing. We go back to that and we've been conditioned with a hundred year old belief. You know, we go back to Freud and some of the earlier prodigy nators of that concept of ego.

Heather Eck: Mm hmm.

Jeffrey Besecker: and it was very staid and one-dimensional. It was very black and white, yet when we go through that series of how that occurs, there's an infinite number of processes throughout our embodied experience that are going on with that, and we've largely attributed it to the mind. Yet our emotional interactions call into play and those filters come in, you know, we label them filters from a certain regard that also has its influence. We think that ego is entirely about our concept of self, yet all of those interactions are inherently influenced by some external factor.

Heather Eck: And I think our minds are big calculators, you know, they're big computers. And so we're always sort of like up here calculating how to make a decision and what that decision outcome might be. And I sort of see the ego as that mind and the spirit as the most authentic part of the self. And so when I, I actually have nicknamed my ego, Brittany, And so when I feel like I am operating from that ego, I will sort of go like, was this me or was this Brittany? What is the right thing here? Again, going back to like, what's the root of this? Why did I make that decision? Did I make that decision from an ego place or did I make that decision from a spirit place or from an authentic place? And I think we're sort of always pushing and pulling between what those things are and why we're making those decisions. and how we're making those decisions and what is actually going to make us feel the most fulfilled or make us feel the most alive in the experience that we're having. But a lot of times, like again, if we're just kind of sort of bulldozing through the day, we're more than likely leading from the ego. and making decisions from the ego for a certain outcome instead of moving through life in a gentle way or in a spiritual way that enables us to sort of go with the flow, for lack of a better word, to allow, to accept, to find peace and to find like a stillness in our day-to-day.

Jeffrey Besecker: Go to that, and it's interesting to see how we can relay that to internal family systems or parts therapy. Looking at things like shadow side, you know, all of these things where we're starting to divide just simply our processes and interactions. We're starting to divide that energy. There's the Freudian slip. The energy or the identity was what I was trying to initially hit of that situation. Right. There again, our subconscious leads us back to where we've been programmed, our mind. Yet again, the ego is very generalized. We neglect to put the ego processes at the end of that. We stop at the equation. And we try to identify it, which is then constructing our identity into the ego rather than observing the ego as a set of processes that it is. Now I am the thing rather than the processes being their own thing. That's where I think as we look into, we're big proponents on Jan Lovinger and Suzanne Cook-Gutner here, looking at ego as the processes themselves. I am not the ego. The ego is just the processes that are functioning. Am I myself or is that its own processes? You know, so often we think all of those processes are authentic to us. Yet what we often neglect to see is that paradox of condition, you know, a paradox of interaction, paradox of environment. The external has such a vast influence on who and what we feel and believe we are. Yet we reject that notion. Well, it's all of me.

Heather Eck: Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Besecker: My emotions are all of me, yet large portions of that emotion are simply a reflection of the portion of an emotional experience you created in the past.

Heather Eck: Right.

Jeffrey Besecker: Where was your focus in that becomes only the small portion of that emotional process that you retained. If that was a traumatic process and that was what became salient or noticeable to you, what you put importance on, that's what you then hold on to and carry forward. But it's just that one small portion of the process. Is that ever an authentic process? You know, this one where I'm real curious now, that notion of authenticity is seldomly, if ever. How do we remove external influence? And we often just see that as only the human interaction rather than the environmental interaction. Why do we cling so adamantly to that is who and what I am?

Heather Eck: Oh my gosh, you know, I feel like that, that is, you could do an entire, we're working on that.

Jeffrey Besecker: We're working on that. It's fun because it's been one that we often, I think, intend to go back to that condition thing. You know, there again, we've, we've only been wrestling with ourselves for a hundred years. Why was it so essential that we created it? And why do we feel so adamant about carrying that idea forward? We've only had it for a hundred years in a lot of ways. We're seeing how and why it works. Sometimes we're seeing in from a certain perspective, big gaps, perhaps in discrepancy in ways that it's not working for us. Yeah. Why do we continue to carry that around in our baggage of experience? Baggage, just kind of referring that to luggage or a place to store it, a compartment. Sometimes we're creating a lot of compartments to put that self in. Most of the time, unconsciously and subconsciously, there's a lot of compartmentalization that goes on that. Yet, then we struggle with that idea, which part of that is the most me? when it's all you and none of it is more true or more essential than any other.

Heather Eck: Yeah. I think that, so what's coming up for me now is, it's so interesting. I was thinking about this this morning, right? Like first thing I do when I wake up is grab my phone. Right. And, and so what I'm becoming more and more aware of each day is what am I consuming first thing in the morning? You know, am I consuming something that's going to make me feel ease in my day or am i consuming something that's going to make me feel anxious or less than and sometimes if i go right to instagram or tiktok and i see all of these different things that are like do this don't do this buy this don't buy that you know i'm simplifying it obviously but i'm consuming that and that energy sort of becomes what I move through my day with, right? My brain starts calculating should go to the gym. I should eat that protein bowl. I should do this. I should do that. And I carry that with me throughout the day. And I was watching the news this morning and seeing this news story about teens and their skincare regimens. And there were all these 12 and 13 year old girls who were buying all these skincare products to take care of their skin at this young age and they're using these things that I'm watching it going where are they getting this right they're consuming they're consuming and that and that's calculating and they're trying they're trying to become something or someone based on the influences of these People who are literally influencing them right so I was thinking about this and I'm listening to you and I'm going how much of that is that person that 13 year old person who's not quite fully formed and who they are and how much of that is just the their ego. process, right? Because their ego wants to be like someone else so that they can be accepted and loved and to fit in. And so a lot of that I wonder is how much of it is really us? How much of it is the true authentic self when we are constantly bombarded with these ideas of who we should be. I would say like, don't shit all over yourself, right? It's not about who you should be, but like who you are and how do you know who you are unless you really can slow down, right? And take in your experiences and really process it from a perspective of this thing that happened and how you respond to it and how that influences how you respond then to other things. So, I mean, gosh, there's so much that I think we are unconsciously aware of, subconsciously aware of, that we move through our day not even realizing how much we're consuming and then how much of it sticks and then becomes part of that big calculator in our minds.

Jeffrey Besecker: infinitely, and that calculator has no ability to conceptualize it infinitely. Right. Every fiber of interaction right now. How many things can you identify on the wall behind you? Don't turn around and look. How many things are on your wall you see every day?

Heather Eck: Oh, right now, my paints, paints, some canvases, some pictures, some paintbrushes, my paper wrapper, my heat gun, all kinds of things that are back there.

Jeffrey Besecker: Yeah, an infinite number. And, you know, for you to start to identify that, then goes back to what's stored in your implicit memory. You know, there again, we start to look at, you've got up and where is your yellow paints located? Let's see how you're systemized. Where's your yellow paints located on your wall without turning around? Right up there.

Heather Eck: But it's right there.

Jeffrey Besecker: So I'm curious, why did you choose yellow on the left?

Heather Eck: Honestly, when I put them up on my pegboard, I started to do them in rainbow order.

Jeffrey Besecker: So you went by rainbow tonality and what were programmed. That spectrum of light, I'm curious, just in the moment, I wonder how deep we actually went with that and where do we kind of draw some of our own conclusions. That's an interesting one to look at. Why in some cultures do we associate yellow with happiness, yet maybe in another? What happens when we go to an Amazon rainforest and their external influence outside of their own in-group, their own band there, and do they have a concept of yellow, first and foremost, as a color? We can see where we diminish that influence of implicit memory and implied condition learning and things of that nature. Inference is a big one. It's a word that sounds big to us sometimes. Inference. Well, what does that mean? It's just that influence. What ways are we being influenced?

Heather Eck: Yeah. And what do we do with that? How do we respond to it? I think that's the that's something I think that I personally am working through now sort of what am I being influenced by and why? And am I allowing myself to be influenced by it? Or do I sort of have a bit, I don't want to use the word control, but like, do I know myself well enough to know where the desire to be influenced is coming from or why I want to feel influenced in a particular way. And I think that, especially for artists,

Jeffrey Besecker: you know we're there's nothing new right everything has already been created we struggle infinitely with that idea of this has to be so original and of me our constructed personality sometimes influencing how we each experience both the process of creating art and how we perceive it for instance You're partnered in an advertising firm. On one hand, you have a partner who embraces a stoic, results-driven mindset, and the other partner embraces a more free-spirited, creative essence. That scenario can tend to create tension, with one prioritizing outcomes and the other more personal, creative-driven approaches. How do you feel these contrasting personality styles influence the ego filters we perceive, and how do they shape our attitudes or outlooks within our relationships in that regard?

Heather Eck: I was just thinking about this. A lot of people, a lot of artists too, especially I think struggle with finding their style and they take a lot of classes from other artists and they're trying to find their style. They end up painting like the way that they were taught to paint. And I think that word resistance is really important because I think a lot of times we resist What is of ourselves right and we and we're trying so hard to make it look like either somebody else's or we're trying so hard to make it look unique that we sort of miss the fact that we are unique and no matter what you put out on the canvas or the or the whatever you compose or whatever choreography you come up with. it is inherently part of you. It's an extension of you. It's an expression of who you are. But a lot of times we resist that. And I think we resist it from, I go back again to the ego process, right? We, we want so badly to fit in or be a part of that. We resist the very nature of ourselves. And we, we sort of start to dislike our own unique mark making our own unique impression that we leave fascinating to me.

Jeffrey Besecker: Yeah. And there we call back to that ego processing and how much of that again becomes conditioned. How much of that is we're looking for the validity of it going back to that percentage. And we reinforce it. We reinforce it. That starts to become the belief. We start to accept it. Is it that authentic to us? Large portions that, again, we're just not aware because just like what's on the wall behind you, unless you see it all the time, you're not real certain where it's at. Simply seeing it reinforces the pattern which cements your notion and belief about it, just like a self. The more you reinforce that belief, no matter where it comes from, the more that becomes a part of that concept. Is that belief necessarily more true? Truth then becomes kind of fuzzy and shady sometimes. What is truth? If you are perpetually engaging anxiety, this is one I'm starting to unravel myself. looking at perpetually engaging anxiety. If you tend to experience anxiety with frequency, are you an anxious person? Does that form your identity? Or is that a pattern that tends to occur with a relative frequency? Totally changes the perspective. The moment you start to cement the idea that I am that thing, you just automatically start focusing on the times it happens. You start to notice more when it happens. You start to anticipate when it happens. A portion of that what happens in some circumstances is you start to then form that familiarity with it. You're actually not uncomfortable with the anxiety. You're comfortable with the familiarity in some regard of how often it occurs. I have some certainty cemented to that and now it's also a part of who I am. So now your mission is to reaffirm that subconsciously more than consciously why that's true about who and what I am and why it will actually occur every time I experience.

Heather Eck: And then you sort of claim that as an identity and then you sort of repeat it. Because it feels good and you find yourself stuck in the cycle of that pain, right? Of that wound. You keep going back to it because it's easier to be stuck in the pain than it is to do the work to figure out why that feels good to you.

Jeffrey Besecker: On that unconscious level, your body tends to inform to those patterns that happen the most. looking at neural networking and how our neural structures are wired. They've even narrowed down now where you can start to observe where every time something happens, it's measured. Beyond our logic about it, this happened, this is the subconscious, which is really probably consciousness, and we're forming our idea of consciousness, how we somehow own that. But that conscious process, whatever it is that witnesses that, starts to happen. Little bits from what we're gathering, you know, from my research, I just say little bits because I can't quantify it because I don't have the number before me. I'm not completely looking for the certainty right now, but little bits of that, we do observe how we influence it. But by and large, it happens without our ability to touch it and put our hands on it or our brain on it or whatever part we're going to focus on it and kind of guide it around. But the more it happens, they collaborate together, just like people, if we throw them together and we get our indiscrepancies out of the way, bigger things happen tend to when we're combining that energy. Right. You know, to that degree, I think this is a very broad assumption where we can draw that conclusion of some of those theories in the law of attraction. You know, are we really attracting them? You know, does this action make the thing come to us or are we working back and forth more? Are we taking some of the thing here and some of the thing here? Attraction in and of itself then becomes kind of a gray area. Are we attracting it or are we just interacting with it? Does the interaction expand the more action that's going on in general?

Heather Eck: that's so interesting though. I mean, I think every, you know, what we've talked about is, is fascinating. I think that our world, ourselves, our brains, our spirits, we're so, we have so many layers to everything that I think you can start to peel away one thought after another and sort of get, again, go back into what is the, What's the the root? Where did this start? Why did it start? Why does it keep happening? And then do I have a desire to continue it or do I have a desire to change it? And I think that's where that sort of the growth mindset comes from of having an awareness of the self enough to go. I really like this or I really want to change this and then Having the discipline to move through that and change it. And I think that all again goes back to like, are you aware of it? And I think a lot of us are not aware of it. And so that for me is sort of where color comes in, because I think. we go through life unaware of how we're influenced by things that we experience around us all the time. Whether that's art or even just by the color you're attracted to or the car that you buy or what you put in your home, there's a reason for it. That reason started somewhere. At some point, somebody assigned a value or a color or a meaning and science can back some of that through psychological impacts or scientific, you know, like the color red increases your heart rate. That's

Jeffrey Besecker: A fact. That's an interesting one to look at. When we bleed, it's red. Do we subconsciously sense that danger? And how does that affect our heart rate based on the belief of fear that our well-being is challenged?

Heather Eck: I've always thought it was blue.

Jeffrey Besecker: Can you actually witness it being blue? Or is it just our perception of the skin, which, you know, a lot of the greatest skin tints start to interact and form that purple-y blue. When we know color theory, we know what color tones are actually in our skin tones. Right. What's the spectrum of a vein tone? That's where my kind of weird, curious mind goes to things like that. To come up with this.

Heather Eck: I feel like you're just a lifelong learner. You have a curiosity about so many things, right?

Jeffrey Besecker: Some of that may have been ingrained in me, I don't know, but I can pinpoint a large portion of it is not of me. It's not authentic to me. It's in my conditioning. Our mother had a motto, when we were faced with circumstances, to not let, I don't know, become your answer. Simply, and in that reinforcing the idea not to be subjective and demean us, that when you meet those questions in life, when you meet those challenges in life, don't stop the equation at the part you don't know. Don't stop the equation at the overwhelm. Simply question and allow the space for answers. However that was relayed, that's how I formed that meeting and have carried that through life. Probably to sometimes I know it becomes a blind spot because then you have an expectancy bias where based on my experience, I assume other people also have that same approach. I have to balance. Is it necessarily who I am? It can be at any given time if I pull that into the construct. If I pull my focus on it, it does become one aspect of a person that I can utilize. There are a lot of people in me and I'm not afraid to accept it and admit it. And some of those people aren't even of this body or me. Right. Some of that inherently knowing what we've formed about our ideas of science is that's passed along. What part of that is spiritual from something that's outside of this body? This was one I was wrestling with today. We're on the idea of self and how we relate to self today, how we form these associations. I'm trying to find a gap to merge those two. Just spirituality and self. Why do we think I'm trying to find a way to word this and, you know, looking at how I feel some ways we got that backward. Our higher self is more spiritual. So in order for that spiritual first to be the better part, the part we're building to, we have to build through a self first, yet for most of our concepts of spirit and soul, that exists and then it comes and inhabits us. Yet, our way to be higher or more engaged with that first is to engage with the thing it's going into, the receptacle it's going into, the box that it's put in. Yet, we call that the higher self rather than the source, rather than the higher spirit. When we look in all of our referencing throughout most of our cultural conditioning, we're referring to the container it ends up with being the highest part of it or the source of it rather than referring to the source. We're still kind of confused and perplexed by that source because we haven't figured out or believe we figured out what it is or why it is.

Heather Eck: Are you talking about like the physical body being the container and then the spirit being the higher self?

Jeffrey Besecker: It's the concept even itself. You know, why do we say our higher self? Let me see if I can put this into an analogy. Imagine a house representing our physical body or the container that holds our existence in this world. We call this a self. The box represents our physical body or tangible presence in the world. While the house provides a shoulder or framework for the self to exist in the physical realm, it's not the origin or the highest source of our conscious being. If we see the house or constructed self as the highest possible form of who or what we are, all we're ever doing is staying trapped in how we perceive the house. We're not seeing that consciousness is the higher form and the origin. And we get stuck in only worrying about what is going on in that house, whatever that thing is beyond that then comes into the container. And it's kind of a really abstract, broad, philosophical thing sometimes. That's the stuff I love. I love that. Why do we want such psychological and emotional certainty about what it is in that container and what we label it? That's where I go in to simplify it. Sometimes we just get so hung up in those concepts that it's not even really about what's in it. It's all of the things we do that we create a lot of times that we stumble on about what it is that's in that box or the belief we form about what that box might be or what is in that box. There again, I'm finding strength and levity in my own perception of it. We talk about out-of-the-box thinking, and that's where we go, and it's all thinking. We think now, and there again, think, think, think, think. We're reinforced so much that we don't even think to not label the thinking part and look at the other parts. what's not in that box, because sometimes that's just as important as the things we believe are in the box. Yet, just like the paints on the wall behind you, we're not always certain where something is. I'm not going to try to set you up to find a gap in that, but think about it, you know. Let me try this test. Let's do a little experiment if you're up for it. Okay, name one thing on your wall that you may or may not have up there right now. I'm going to try to see if we can find a way where there's something you believe is there but might not be there. You know your wall pretty good, which is how well we know the concept we've created about ourselves becomes some of that gap to me. You know, we're creating the concept first and foremost, so why not, if you're creating it, just change the creation. And sometimes we're changing the creation in a way we're trying to avoid what's actually on that wall. We're going very abstract today. We're doing abstract art lessons today.

Heather Eck: That's all right.

Jeffrey Besecker: We like our abstract art, but we're sometimes fearful of our abstract fearing. I'm reinforcing our abstract thinking or abstract constructs or abstract systems of belief. What else is on your wall behind you typically?

Heather Eck: Um, so I have a bunch of paints like rose and rose paints. There's probably like four, at least three to four paints deep on each peg towards the bottom. I've got a couple of random things. Like, I think if I remember, I feel like I've got a paint can opener on there. I feel like I've got some paint brushes on there. Um, some wire. I mostly keep paints up there, but there are like a handful of other things that will kind of stick up there as I need it. And then behind me, I have the little station with my paper where I roll the paper out so I can wrap the paintings up. And I've got little glass cups that have paint markers and sharpies and like a razor blade and scissors. And my issue is I'm always moving things around. So one day I'll have the cutter there and the next day it's over at my desk over there and I never know where anything is. So the board is the attempt. to create organization in this mess of a studio.

Jeffrey Besecker: This is our conversation right now. This is our episode. So we look at your little work area back there. Is that typically where you work? You know, you do some easel work. You have easels in your background. where typically that's our kind of propped up workstation for an artist. Right now, to me, from my perception, you're not engaged with your easel, right? You don't have an active work sitting and waiting for engagement. So your easel's kind of sitting there. Does this sound kind of guilt ridden right now? about your easel. I'm feeling guilty about your easel. And this tells more about me because now I'm feeling guilty about your easel not having. What does that say about me? That's our conversation is I'm forming assumptions about your easel. In your experience, based on my emotional responses, I feel a guilt and uncertainty about why there's nothing on your easel. It's nothing to do about you because it has nothing to do about your processes. I'm now inferring and implying what I believe about your easel, but more importantly, I'm reflecting internally what's going on with my emotional state at any given moment. Right now, I feel guilty because I think, well, there's an easel and as an artist, it should have an active painting on it. That's a reflection of my inner state. That's what I'm aware of right now as I'm tuning into that. I'm actually now as I engage that feeling of just guilt and shame, feeling myself tense up. I'm feeling that typical kind of apprehension and not in my throat chakra. We're going to tie it to the chakra. Let's read that now. Give me your reading on that.

Heather Eck: On the feeling that you're having?

Jeffrey Besecker: The feeling of the tension and tightness in my chakra. No, specifically in the chakra. What information and data would you gather from your perception of chakra from tightness in the throat? Now to the point now where my voice just consciously shifted. You picked that up energetically. It just, the tone shifted and there's a raspiness to my voice now as I listen to it that wasn't there and I'm tight. I'm resisting.

Heather Eck: Yeah. So for me, when I experienced somebody with tightness in their throat and the color that I see for you right now is sort of like a blue gray. And that to me is, it sits in the space of grief. And so if there is a restrictive feeling or there's the guilt or shame associated with something like art, which is about expression, which makes sense since it's in your throat, that there could be this desire to want to communicate something or express something. But the emotion that I'm feeling from it is, is grief. related to not being able to express that or not having the ability to convey something in the way that you want it to be conveyed. So if you are also an artist and you feel that, it may be that there's work or something that you have wanted to create or that you've been thinking about creating or that you are feeling regretful about not being able to create. that could be holding you back, keeping you tight in that throat space, which is happening for me now too.

Jeffrey Besecker: Now it's implicitly, now you're thinking about your throat space and how much of that, I'm curious now, just from your radical perspective, how much of that then becomes our emotional inference and counter-transference? How do we start to then subconsciously wire that with our natural patterns of response? I'm even looking at the idea of natural. How much of natural is actually natural? And how much of that is mirrored? How much of that is conditioned? How much of that is programmed? And that's all rhetorical, right?

Heather Eck: It is, you know.

Jeffrey Besecker: Yeah. Maybe you have an opinion about that, but maybe we don't necessarily unravel that opinion if you feel inclined to. So.

Heather Eck: Yeah, sure. No, I think, you know, our mind-body-spirit connection. I believe in for me through my synesthesia, I see or experience people through color and I can kind of tell where they dwell in their body from a physical perspective. Then sometimes I feel it in my body or I sort of know where in the body that person dwells or how they're either holding themselves or where they're sort of living in that space. And then from a spiritual perspective, I believe that your You know, when you fix the spirit, you fix the body. So if there's pain in the body, then there's something associated with the spiritual aspect of what that energy center represents. So for me, I have high blood pressure. So in my heart space, there is pain. A lot of times, high blood pressure is associated with anger. And so there's something in me that is angry or that I have anger about. And so in my spirit, if I can fix what I'm angry about in my spirit, then I should be able to fix the pain that's in my heart, if that makes sense. So that's sort of how I associate the color and the feeling and the energy and how I use my synesthesia a little bit differently than most people because I can feel it energetically, spiritually, and from a sentient sort of way.

Jeffrey Besecker: Yeah, yeah, that whole notion first of energy is curious. I'm not going to dive too far in that because I want to hold on to something here if we can. If you're feeling vulnerable and open, I'm going to give you kind of a setup here. That idea of anger came to the forefront just now in your expression of it. And I know that's something I'm doing all kinds of conditioning here ahead of time. Is that something you'd like to look at right now? Why anger? Yeah, why?

Heather Eck: Yeah, I mean, I think that that's something I've been trying to kind of work through from a personal perspective, but I recognize that it's there because I haven't fixed the physical issue. You know?

Jeffrey Besecker: Yeah. So that's feeling into your feelings. And that's one thing I think as human beings, as we look at our broader picture, we often can have that trouble in expressing what that present moment feeling is. how we're experiencing what is coming up. That's one area we're really looking at kind of diving in with the program is how much of that is the present moment in experience and how much of that becomes implicit. You know, where's it drawing from your nervous system regulation? Where's it drawing from implicit memory? I'm holding with that shame that I was feeling kind of bouncing back and forth here. And just with the curiosity, I'm going to go back and look at it later, because I don't know right in the moment I have the full contact with why that shame would be. As you're talking through with expression, I'm able to start drawing some conclusions about expression itself. How much of that might be guilt and shame about what I'm expressing, and might there be a portion of that That's guilt and shame. And this is probably my own subconscious working it out and saying what it is about how much I allow others to express. And I'm sure that there's a part of that equation that just answered its own question. Once we move some of those processes of ego out, how do we find the things that rectify that divide then becomes a new conversation down the road?

Heather Eck: Yeah. I think that there's a lot there to unravel. One of them, I think, is that how we mirror for each other. I do think that there are things that when we meet someone, when we encounter someone, if there's something about them that we That we like or dislike it's because it is a reflection of an area of ourselves that we're either uncomfortable with or that we have a desire to kind of understand more. And so I feel like there could be some validity there if you were to kind of look at it from that perspective from a mirroring perspective.

Jeffrey Besecker: Now, knowing some of the practices I've studied, some of the statistical data, scientific data, however we want to label that today, knowing that portions of that are implicit in nature, are in kind of default memory networks in our processes of the brain. It's interesting to look at again, there's probably more of it in our embodied state than what we're, maybe not even willingly, but what we readily admit, or we're even aware of. How much of that is based on where our emotional autonomic ladder is. And why even that concept, I look at why we rank it in a ladder of hierarchy and try to make one more important than the other. There's some subconscious programming even in that when we go to that level. and truly look at it with that lens, that perspective. Yeah, I just trailed off on that one. That's OK. It was a kind of a broad unraveling today, but I think this has really been the cool part. When we talk about just being in the moment, whether those moments are any more authentic, I'm not going to really wrestle with today. Hopefully when it happens, somebody else can have a valued opinion and speak it, even when it's in contrast with me, hopefully. We're able to see those and just not form the resistance to it. Sometimes, hopefully, it does open my eyes to see where those gaps are in my own perception of it.

Heather Eck: Hopefully. Again, I think it goes back to just your awareness of it. You know, I applaud that awareness that you have of your own body, of your own reaction to something, of your own response. And I thank you for your vulnerability and sharing that with me too, because I think a lot of times we have it, we have an experience of something makes us feel a certain way, but we don't always give ourselves the space in the moment to go, hold on a second. I'm feeling. I'm feeling something here. What is this about? So I appreciate you sharing in that with me. And I want to assure you that my poor easel does not get a lot of work because I have nails on the wall.

Jeffrey Besecker: Now I'm reflecting upon you, my social influence that now calls into play. Why then do we question our own validity when somebody mirrors that to us? How much of that is implied and how much of that implication drags us into the scenario, so to speak, even when we might not have been feeling it? Why maybe does that then trigger that cycle of response? Is that response authentic to either of our experiences or what external forces influence that? It's a broad picture and it's a very vague, open rhetorical question, but sometimes just allowing that space to question starts that process of going through various possible perspectives, various possible. not being so certain in our idea of knowing it, even how we start to form assumptions about somebody's intention, how we can start to form assumptions about somebody's emotion. And I got to emphasize this both with beneficial and adverse results, both with healthy and unhealthy results. It's not that the fact that we do interact, that's to be stigmatized or marginalized. How do we empower that interaction? How do we pull the strength of that together to build something that's more cohesive and more beneficial, more healthy?

Heather Eck: I think for me, what I have found helpful recently is to sort of outwardly communicate what's happening for me. And a lot of times even kind of say the story I'm telling myself is this. So if I feel triggered by something or I see something that makes me go, Oh, I don't like that. Or even if I'm scrolling through Instagram and I see a reel for someone, I'll go, Oh, you know, the story I'm telling myself about this is that I'm either not good enough or this person's more successful or this or whatever the story is so that I can sort of separate a little bit of what is I'm going to call again the ego process, right? Because I think that's coming from my ego process of calculating and comparing. versus, okay, but what is it for me? Where's that pain come from? Or where, why am I feeling that way? Why do I feel like that's the story that I, that I have to tell right now? And, and it verbalizing it in the way that we did today is I think the most helpful because then you, I think we're meant to collaborate, right? Like we're meant to communicate and collaborate with each other and ask ourselves, this is feel right. Let me get another perspective on this. Is that a true story or is this a made-up story? What's the real story here?

Jeffrey Besecker: What's this really about? Is that story just a little bit gray in its tonality, just like the blue-gray and the uncertainty that you pointed out, the energetic perception in my chakra? Or, you know, was that the actual change in tone and chakra or just the change in energetic perception or how you sensed it with the synesthesia?

Heather Eck: Yeah, it depends on when I tune in. So I haven't really been reading, you know, your colors as we've been talking. But when you sort of gave me permission to look at it, then I went, OK, let me let me look at it.

Jeffrey Besecker: I'm not going to stick my finger in your chakra unless you allow me to.

Heather Eck: I'm not going to go poking around in there.

Jeffrey Besecker: Oh my, I'm off the rails with this. That is good etiquette.

Heather Eck: This happens a lot in my conversations.

Jeffrey Besecker: Somebody's chakra, unless they invite you into that world. I know.

Heather Eck: Is it okay?

Jeffrey Besecker: How often do we impose that upon others? And you know, keep your nose clean. That was a mantra of my grandmother reinforced with varying effects. Keep your nose clean. Don't stick your finger in someone's chakra unless they invite you into it.

Heather Eck: You know, it's so sometimes I experience things without even knowing a lot of times with music or with a smell or with something and I'm like, oh, that is this and it's sort of like is part of my awareness. But when it comes to reading people and the colors I see for people, unless somebody asks me or unless I'm doing a portrait for somebody, I really try not to look unless it just sort of happens. And then I feel like, okay, well, I just saw that person lives in their orange. They live in their sacral. And so what does that mean for them? But yeah, it's an interesting way to go about living.

Jeffrey Besecker: That's my own lesson today as I reflect back on a couple encounters I've had this week. I'm going to keep those bottled. I'm going to be reserved about that today because it probably is not good social etiquette there. There again, I'm going to work on what is a healthy construct? What is healthy social conditioning? And where do we form healthy boundaries or perspectives based on that? That's that's my lesson today in that regard. They can be both. Sometimes we get so black and white in those things that all conditioning is bad. All thought is bad. You know, only positive thoughts is a big one that I'm kind of parsing through this year. Where do those things that we stigmatize and marginalize also find the benefit? Especially with our emotions, because what we tend to do is compartmentalize again. We start to put things in those boxes that they're all still part of us, part of our experience. How accepting of that part are we, you know, and based on what criteria? Some form of openness, vulnerability, acceptance has to step in. If I didn't own and accept that guilt and shame that was subconsciously rising up was also authentic to me in that moment, I could have formed the perception, no, that's not me, and denied it. I could have turned from it. I could have pushed it down. I could have ran, which is just as authentic to me, still had some origin in me. There was still a part of me. And was that part ever separate from anything else? That's where I go with it.

Heather Eck: I think we're all big onions. You know, I think that.

Jeffrey Besecker: That's a good analogy. I like that analogy. I'm going to, I'm going to throw validity behind that analogy today and confirmation biases and all the other stuff.

Heather Eck: We are, I'm so many layers, right? So many experiences that impact how we respond to people and places and foods and emotions. And a lot of times I think we're just, when I went through my coach training a couple of years ago, one of the things we studied was this, it was like the seven habits of mindfulness. And it was, Those things like beginner's mind and non-judgment and patience and all of those. I think that all kind of goes back to how we move through our day. If we move through from a mindful place, then you'd hope that you're present and aware and you're patient and you're accepting. I think that that's where we get out of the calculating ego process. and we allow ourselves to just sort of be moving through the day with ease because we're not judging, right? So when you encounter somebody that's different, you're like, Oh, okay, well, they're a little bit different, but let's figure out what they're about. And you have patience and you have openness. And so I think that is, we're so multi-layered and multifaceted in our lives and our spirits and how we live. And we get to choose how we want to respond to different things based on all of those experiences. But But I hope that more people will choose to move through their day with ease instead of from the ego process, my Brittany. Get my ego Brittany out of here.

Jeffrey Besecker: If we can form a construct based on Heather, why can't that construct also exist in us named Brittany? Is there really any harm in that? You know, it's interesting to look at that idea of having multiple personalities. Yet I've had conversations with cognitive scientists past episodes. I'm going to harken back where we discussed how there are, in essence, many us's, many me's, and how that shows up differently. Which one of those things is more us or more authentic? And how do we determine that? It's very rhetorical and philosophical and broad, perhaps.

Heather Eck: It is. I think, are you familiar with Glennon Doyle? Yes. I can't remember what the name of her book is. Maybe it's Love Warrior. She talks about having this aspect of herself she calls her representative, and she would send her representative out into the world, you know, and it is like a different aspect of herself, right? Um, and I think we are, I think we are many people and I think we are going back again, multi-layered. Um, and I, when I think about Brittany, um, I think of her as my representative, you know, I, I will greet the world with this mask on for what I think people want me to be or how I think they expect me to show up. And so that's where I kind of go, OK, Brittany, go take a nap. You know, like, let's just be me. Let's just be who I am and not worry about being accepted or being loved or or, you know, not everybody's going to shelter under your tree. And so I don't need to be loved or accepted by everybody. But that's a conscious like effort for me to have to shift into that place.

Jeffrey Besecker: Is it truly a mask or is something just in that moment more prominent? Is it more salient? Is it more essential even? And why, if that thing is more essential, do we find a cause to kind of discount it, to diminish it?

Heather Eck: I think it depends. I don't mean not to dismiss the question, but I think it sort of depends on the circumstances.

Jeffrey Besecker: That's actually, I feel a good way. It depends. That to me goes where I would go. Why do we then seek at certainty sometimes? You know, sometimes we do go to that certainty that we have to find that certain answer. We then discount the broadness and breadth of it, the potential in it, rather than saying it depends or it's complex. Sometimes we run around from that complexity itself. Neuophobia is a condition just like synesthesia we've labeled in our perception. where new things, new ideas or new data just automatically trigger that fearful and anxiety driven response. Sometimes that guilt and shame, that's the underlying secondary emotion in those things. We run from the new thing just because it's unfamiliar and it triggers that emotional response rather than opening up and saying, let's just consider the depth of the perspective. right just as authentic to us just as essential even in that fear sometimes we run from that fear and say that's not a part of me i want to be fearless yet that fear is still going to be a natural part of our natural emotional cycles that's beyond any ability to control when we do try to assert that ability to control It's like a boiler plate, you know, we're putting a lid on it and it bubbles up and it bubbles up and it finds its way out because it's authentic to us. It's a genuine part of our experience. Yet we think we can rid ourselves and control it. But the more pressure we put in that boiler plate, the hotter it gets, the more it bubbles up. And eventually there's a freaking mess.

Heather Eck: Right. And you just made me think of this expression, what you resist persists, right? Like what if you're, yeah, in a lot of cases, totally. So yeah, let's jump back. I think, yeah, I jumped on you there.

Jeffrey Besecker: Sorry. Before that idea comes, no, you're fine. Go ahead. That was a subconscious dodge that, that stepped on him and poked my finger in the chocolate. Now that I've disrupted you and caused a mess with that idea, let's jump back to that idea of identifying Brittany and identifying Heather. Just who's who here. Now let's look at that concept. Are Brittany and Heather two different entities? Is Brittany a solopreneur and is Heather a solopreneur? Yeah. Are they collaborating a separate identity or are they creating resistance?

Heather Eck: They definitely create resistance.

Jeffrey Besecker: So when there's a resistance, is that good or bad?

Heather Eck: Let me tell you a real quick story. I was driving out to Ohio to attend an art show, and I live in North Carolina, so it's a pretty long drive. I was with a friend of mine, and we were chatting about the coming year and what I wanted my art calendar to look like from a release perspective. really trying to control the outcome, right? And there's a part of me that knows that I have no control over this because I don't know when inspiration strikes or what a new collection will look like or what, you know, I have no idea. And all of a sudden, this big tractor trailer comes rolling by right in front of us. And on the side of the tractor trailer, it said, super ego. And I went, oh, no.

Jeffrey Besecker: Talk about fortunate timing.

Heather Eck: You know, and then I thought about it and I went, Oh wow, how much of this is me trying to live from that space? We talked about the mindfulness of allowing and non judgment, you know, all the things. And then here comes, you know, my super ego wanting to really control and calculate and manage and, you know, squeeze the life out of this art business that I'm trying to cultivate. And so I think that they I think that in some ways they can be supportive of each other, the ego and the spirit. But there are also times where I think I have to recognize who's in the driver's seat and go, OK, why am I making this decision or why am I expecting this outcome or where is this desire coming from and who's in charge here? And there are a lot of times where I think it's my super ego. I think it's Britney and she wants to control it. And when I'm when I'm in a space of allowing and accepting and, you know, moving through the day with ease, not trying to throttle this gift that it's my spirit or it's me. And there are times where I'll go, Britney, just go take a nap, girl. Just go lay down for a little bit. Let me meditate. Let me find peace and let me move through this.

Jeffrey Besecker: Let's step back. Let's look at my superego and he's Bob. Okay. No, it's not pointed toward you. So it's, I'm taking ownership of this. My Bob, why would I look at Bob now and say, Bob is the culprit in this because Bob is my ego. And that's who we naturally blame because now I think Bob is the guy that always creates the problem. I've now formed this belief about Bob and anytime Bob steps foot into the work environment or my personal environment. Bob's the bad guy, here comes the bad guy. I'm waiting for Bob and Bob's only job is to be a pain in my ass. Yet Bob's heart of hearts is to look out for the best good of that company. His intention is to find your highest self, to keep you connected with spirit because you keep blaming it on Bob. Yet you and Bob are not two solopreneurs, you and Bob are a company incorporated. This is about as close to business as I tend to get, you know, and I'm using the analogy because this is one reason why we keep our business sometimes out of who and what we are in our program. This is, I'm going to not going to lie. This is inherently why we don't discuss business because it's always about how it's incorporated as a human being. Your business is not a human being. Your business is not who you are. Your business is not an entity that's a part of you. It's an entity in and of itself. And you come into that equation as a solopreneur. So that's one perspective. But bringing that back then again, Why do we automatically then start to say Bob's the bad guy and project what belief we have about Bob? Emotional inference. We're going back to past, not only Bob's past actions, but more importantly, our own past actions or past emotions, really far back emotions. A lot of times that we don't even have an ability to first notice the complete picture. And secondly, we don't have the logical capacity built in yet to form those compare and contrasts. And then also again back to the fact that now Bob is reflecting who or what was in the past, but we're making an assumption about Bob. That's how we carry much of our emotional interactions through life. Bob now is making me angry. Bob's fault. So where's the originality in that, I say, that signals what's more genuine because you and Bob are working together if you're in alignment. Yeah. When you're incorporated and cohesive, you can see what role Bob plays and say, I trust Bob to be working in my highest good because Bob and I are one spiritual being to begin with until we start to form that separation. Till we say you're a solopreneur and I'm a solopreneur. Your business is yours and mine is mine. Yet, we don't completely discount the fact that duality has to exist or we can't differentiate. That's a broad one and I'm going to that to kind of look at that idea of duality because we run around from that idea of duality that, well, I just discount the parts that have to sometimes be dual to perform the task. Its process is over here because that's where it needs to be. We're still part of the same entity. And just like our business, we should be able to step away from that and allow the parts to work like the parts should work. Our personal business operates just like an effective business. If your personal business is out of alignment, your internal business is going to be out of alignment with your business processes and its entity. It is a living, breathing thing on its own, especially when you bring other operators into that. They're inherently a part of that business, but the business is its own thing. It's not your business. Now it's our business. If we have equal opportunity and ownership in those processes, the actual energy of the ownership is not in the share of money we invest in it. It's in we both are in unity in this. Our souls and spirits are aligned. Our energies are aligned. The rest is extraneous and baggage we add into that. That's my very broad subjective view of it. I don't typically weigh in those waters, but I'm going to today.

Heather Eck: All right.

Jeffrey Besecker: We're not a business podcast, but that is my perspective on it. And that's maybe where I'll leave where I've sat with it for four years now and not really spoke too much about it. Learning those relationships because everything from my assertion and my assumptions in business is built on relationships, processes, and interactions. Even within your emotional interactions, even within who and what you feel and form and believe is a you, there's all systems and processes and how those are working determines the outcome.

Heather Eck: Yeah, no, I think you're 100% right.

Jeffrey Besecker: I know you're exactly right. I'm just flowing. That's where I'm at. And if I'm being true to the moment, that's where I'm at. And it may be like one of the few times I talk about that, because I don't feel it's my box of worms to unravel. But that was my two cents worth on it today. Are we acting as solopreneurs divided when we say, my concept, I am a self. These things are myself. If we are soloing, where do we allow that part of us to do its best job? And how, when those parts are divided, do we get in the way of either part doing its job?

Heather Eck: I think they have to go hand in hand. I think that a lot of times the ego, because it is part of the calculating process, is trying to keep us safe, right? It's trying to keep us protected and trying to help us move along. I think as a creative, as an artist, and as business owners, there's this aspect of getting in the flow, like you said, or sort of like being part of the rhythm where you're sort of in the zone and things are just kind of flowing out of you and you're allowing that and you're not resisting that. I think sometimes where ego can step in and not be as supportive as it could be is when it has an agenda that sort of lives in a space of safety and not in a space of creation.

Jeffrey Besecker: Might, from that perspective, the ego also be the part of you that allows you to step into that vulnerability and be confident with risk-taking? How much of that, from that perspective, are we in general conditioned because we've only heard or been reinforced the belief that the ego's only job is to shield and protect us? How much of that ego, and this is sometimes maybe stepping out of that traditionally conditioned belief about ego, the same part of process that does also have a role in making us get out of bed, not to protect us, because it does have a job to push us for that higher good of stepping beyond into that risk. Its job is to be the bold one. Yet a lot of the times we tend to marginalize it again. It's keeping me safe and holding me back. It's just shifting the perspective and we're creating that perspective anyway. We've created the perspective that I've already forgot your ego's name. What was the gal's name again? Bob and Brittany. Bob and Brittany. See, I'm confusing all of our egos now because it starts to become convoluted, right? We're now merging your ego with my ego. This is a good example. Let's sit with this. Now your ego just got merged with my ego and how confused did that get to me? yeah that's our lesson in that thing to me just in that moment that sometimes our ego parts that we've identified start to become confusing as they mix as they interact as we start to reflect on whose ego was doing what and can we accurately assess that because was it my own forgetting or my reflection my perception of bob that was now merging with various perceptions of Britney's, whether it's yours, mine, or some other external force, it starts to all move into that gray that's creating all of that resistance. We're trying to figure it out. Sometimes we just have to step back and allow that space, not to judge whose ego or blame whose ego, but just to be present with those things.

Heather Eck: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I think that all comes back to like that being present, right? Like being present and being tuned in and going, I am experiencing something. I have a feeling about this or this thing just happened and here's, here's where we are with it. Right. Like I do, I do have a deep desire to understand the great mysteries of the world from so many different perspectives. Um, but sometimes I think it just comes down to going, well, kind of is what it is. and I just don't know and I just sort of have to live in that space of knowing that it exists without having the answer as to why.

Jeffrey Besecker: That's where the guilt and shame comes up on my part because I am sometimes so driven by that why. Which in and of itself is a form of insecurity. I can now recognize that. How healthy of a relationship do I maintain with that insecurity? I don't discard it because there's value in it. I don't get angry about it. Hopefully now most of the time. Sometimes it does rear up. And why now do I automatically just say, yeah, I don't get angry? Why am I trying to run from that? You know, I do get angry still. It used to be an unhealthy relationship. Now we flip that a little bit. Now I can learn to modulate that emotion and regulate it, not control it. I don't try to rid myself of it. I don't try to stuff it in the box. I don't try to blame it, Bob. Bob and I are working together. That's how we're making our business go and we're hopefully making the best of it.

Heather Eck: There's a song that came out a couple of years ago. It's called, um, I think it's called grandmother's sphere. It's by East forest. It's a band that sort of creates these like meditative music. Have you, are you familiar?

Jeffrey Besecker: That's a new one. I'm going to check that out. That sounds cool.

Heather Eck: I'll send you the link. Um, but one of the lyrics in the grandmother's fear song is that it says I didn't try to, I didn't try something about it. Didn't try to eliminate my ego. I made friends with it. And I was, I was really liked that lyric because I think that that's part of it is being able to kind of make friends with your Bob or your Brittany and know that there's a purpose and know that there is safety and security there. But there's also, sort of a freedom when you can know when you're working with your ego and when you're letting your ego sort of drive the bus.

Jeffrey Besecker: That's an awesome point to point out today, how we try to eliminate systems and processes that are innately and inherently wired into us, yet we think we can rid part of us, a part of, you know, our processes and our systems. In order to get rid of Bob from Heather or Jeff, or Brittany from Heather or Jeff, because now we're all in business together. I'm going to bring this back in. We're all in business together. If we fire Bob, if we fire Brittany, you and I, Heather and Jeff, our business stops existing. That's the only way we get rid of them. And even then, does an echo of those, any of those four entities still remain a part of some other business, some other entity, some other person? Can we truly remove even the ego from our past interactions or our relationships?

Heather Eck: I don't think so. I think that the ego is necessary. I think it is a required course.

Jeffrey Besecker: Sometimes we can demote it, you know, for temporary. And that's the great thing about being flexible is, well, for a time being, we're going to refocus your energy. And it's how we frame it. You're not being let go. We still value you. But for now, we're going to shift your focus. And the best way maybe to do that is, but this role has its own significance. It might not necessarily be any more meaningful, but in this moment, this is what's essential. This is what gets our business done. That's how I'm trying to find that fluidity. And it's more about the fluidity than about what the title of the role is. In this moment, it gets the job done. That's the relationship I like to have with ego because it's more about, and not even about trying to validate what gets done, but what is essential for the flow of the processing. What makes the processes work in harmony and what allows that to just be in a more agreeable state? It doesn't have to be better. It doesn't have to be worse. Hopefully I can look more objectively on it. What just allows those things to flow? And if it's not getting the job done, how do we increase that flow?

Heather Eck: I think what you just said is finding that agreeable state or that agreeable place is really like the secret sauce of learning to kind of work with your ego within your spiritual experience as a human. I don't think that ever goes away, but I think we do sort of become friends with it and I think we become friends with it. by practicing some of those mindfulness habits and really becoming more and more aware of why we respond the way we respond, and sometimes without having to understand why, which is hard, especially for someone like me who wants to know. I want to know all the things.

Jeffrey Besecker: You know, that's just when we think we've discovered all of the things, a new thing comes up and hopefully that's our progression of flow. I think we've kind of went down that path today. We'll leave it at that. Fabulous conversation.

Heather Eck: Totally awesome conversation about things. I never thought we'd go to different places, but super organic and super interesting.

Jeffrey Besecker: Very organic today. Probably way, way more organic than what we've tended to do. I want to thank you for sharing this wonderful conversation with me today, Heather. This truly, truly has been a joyful, enlightening, very fun and fluid conversation. So thank you for sharing that with me today and sharing that also because this is going to find the ears of our listeners.

Heather Eck: Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed every single second and I appreciate the opportunity to chat with you.

Jeffrey Besecker: Our conversation with Heather has been a journey. Yet, we leave you with this. In the pie-eating contest of life, there are no winners or losers. Why? In the end, we all get to eat the pie. Today, we'd humbly like to thank our brilliant production team here at The Light Inside. Their talent, research, and writing make our program the resource that you know and love. We truly appreciate the energy invested in each episode, from aligning our guest and spending creative copy to the editing and the music selection that provides deeper meaning in our messaging. Our community is grateful for the depth and wisdom of your continued contributions, and it doesn't escape our notice. Thank you on behalf of us all. If you found value and meaning in today's show, please share it with a friend or loved one. And as always, we're grateful for you, our valued listening community. This has been The Light Inside. I'm Jeffrey Biesecker.